All Linda Hopkins wanted for her beloved cat, Leo, was a modicum of sincerity in response to his death at the jaws of neighboring dogs.
After weeks of tumult, she seems to have finally gotten her wish.
Hopkins had just moved into her new home not far from Prospect Avenue and Beryl Street, after months of searching to find a home to accommodate both her income and Leo’s presence, she said.
She had been in her home for only a few days, she said, when tragedy struck.
“It was this snarling, nasty, guttural, carnal sound,” said Hopkins’s neighbor, Heather Ludwick.
Ludwick lives with her fiancé and his family a door over from Hopkins’s house. She said that she has heard these dogs barking throughout the night for months.
The moments leading up to Leo’s death are unclear: Ludwick and her fiancé, Wyndham Messinger, believe that the dogs lunged at the cat as he walked along the relatively short fence behind Hopkins’s home, pulling him down. One of the dogs’ owners, Evelyn Spencer, said that the cat came into their yard on his own accord.
However he got there, the next moments were quick.
“I didn’t hear the sound of anything being chased,” Messinger said. “Just the dogs snarling.”
It wasn’t long after that the dogs’ owners brought Leo back to Hopkins in a box, wrapped in a blanket — alive, but in pain.
“They said ‘He might have a little bite on his hip,’” Hopkins recalled.
The bite, she said, was worse than they indicated, deep enough to go from the surface of the 14-pound cat’s skin to his rectum.
“(The veterinarian) said that he’d never be able to walk again,” Hopkins said, immediately making the decision to euthanize the cat.
Hopkins was crushed, she said, distraught for days — and on top of the emotional damage of losing her pet, she was also on the hook for $1,900 in veterinarian bills.
As it turns out, pain lingered on both sides of the fence.
Spencer said that she was fighting severe stress-related illness brought about by the situation, citing accusations of neglectful dog ownership from her neighbors, as the cause of her unease.
“I had neighbors banging on my door, telling me that my dogs are vicious, Animal Control calling me again and again,” she said. “I tried to deescalate the situation, but there’s only so much you can do when people are shouting in your face.”
Her dogs, she says, are rescue dogs. She and her roommate, Deborah Countess, rescued two of their three dogs two years ago; the third was rescued six months ago.
“We did nothing wrong. I’m an animal lover, I don’t want to see anything get hurt,” Spencer said, calling it a tragic situation, and stating that her dogs are sweet to people, not vicious as neighbors contend. The lamentable part of the situation, she feels, is that her dogs are being attacked for their instincts. “If you can teach a cat to stop chasing a bird, I’ll gladly teach my dogs to stop chasing cats,” she said. She also confirmed police reports indicating a similar incident occurring last year, when a cat owned by a previous tenant at the same house Hopkins now lives in was killed.
The problem, she said, is the fence: It meets city code on Spencer’s side, but due to construction and raised on the property on Hopkins’s side, it appears to be near four feet tall.
The relations between the two parties was so strained that Redondo Beach Police made contact with both parties, ordering Hopkins’ landlord to refrain from contacting Countess and Spencer.
Last week, Hopkins received a visit from an unexpected guest: Countess.
According to Hopkins, Countess came to make amends and foster an understanding — the two conversed at Hopkins’s house, and after hours of conversation (and a bit of wine, Hopkins said), the two emerged on good terms.
Spencer said that she and Countess have spent “thousands of dollars” improving the fence between the two homes, building a larger barrier against cats and other creatures.
And according to Hopkins, the two households recently broke bread together, sharing a meal at a cookout.
“Isn’t it funny that two people can go from hating each other to toasting each other?” she said.
